One of the objectionable consequences of living alone is realizing that “something awful” including natural death may happen. Hours or even days can pass before anyone else knows. In the most extreme case, a person may simply die. Days or even weeks might pass before others become aware that death has occurred. The media all-to-often reports the finding of a partly decomposed body of someone who lived alone and who was believed to have died “some time ago”.
More urgently, a person living alone may experience a life-threatening health problem such as a heart attack, stroke or seizure and the event may go unnoticed for hours or even days, without a care-provider knowing. The result may be death or permanent disability for a person who, if his circumstance had been noticed sooner, may have been saved from death, brain damage or other debilitating conditions. When a person lives alone in an isolated environment, even a lesser impairment, such as having fallen down and broken a leg may go unnoticed and unaided by others.
Calling “911” for Help
In the past, “calling 911” or someone else on the telephone was the most common solution for gaining assistance when something “unexpectedly awful” happened. The shortfall of this approach is that it assumes that the needy party is in condition to in fact make the emergency call. However, such an assumption is invalid if a stroke, seizure or heart attack occurs. Nor may the assumption be valid in the event of a physical mishap, such as when an elderly person falls and breaks a hip-joint. There are countless other injurious situations where a handicap, debilitant injury, or mind altering event may limit or even fully prevent the victim from “calling 911” or a care-provider.
Wireless or “Cell” Phones
A wireless telephone, or a cellular telephone at least permits a user to keep a phone physically with their person. Wireless telephones have become sufficiently small in size and effective in use that they can be readily carried in a pocket, on a belt or even worn about the neck. However, such dependence on having the telephone “with you” still overlooks one of the main problems which may befall an elderly or infirm person living alone. That central issue is manifested in a situation where sudden attack, such as a stroke, a seizure or a sudden fall which knocks the user out may thwart any possibility for hailing help over the telephone, even if it is in reach.
In many life-threatening situations, confusion reigns and the victim is simply not able to make the necessitous call for help. Wireless telephones are relatively complicated and difficult to use (in part due to their usual diminutive size), if you put yourself in the place of the needy user and particularly a handicapped or elderly person. Even cordless telephones are difficult for confused or elderly users. Both cellphones and cordless telephones suffer from battery failure, especially when they are used separate from their “docking station” (recharger) and their regular recharge is overlooked.
A most important point is that, with the largest “at risk” group being the elderly, utter simplicity is desirable because the potential victim is likely to be confused, approaching senility, physically disabled, partially blind, or otherwise limited in their ability to properly respond to a “reporting-in” system such as proposed by AlertOne™. Furthermore the needy user often “forgets” to push the panic button, often due to simple confusion or maybe through sheer anxiety.
An onset of a stroke or heart attack often leaves the user in a panic state, confused and grossly weakened. Heart palpitations and loss of breath can lead to fainting. Eyesight may be affected. Eyeglasses may have fallen away or are not being worn at the time. Trembling fingers may not be controllable. In any event, a strong likelihood prevails that the user may not be able to utilize the perceived benefit of the telephone access just at the time when the situation is grave and the need is definitively the greatest.
Panic-Button Operated Alarm
Known are the earlier mentioned “panic button” actuated alarms which may be configured in form of a bob worn on a necklace, a bracelet or on a key-chain. Pressing the associated panic button ordinarily serves to send a wireless signal to a remote receiver which subsequently sounds an alarm. For example, an outdoor flashing light may be turned “on”, or a bell may ring.
A further refinement of this elemental approach includes a remote receiver which auto-dials “911” or a preselected “care-provider” telephone number, alerting the party on the other end that a problem may exist. Potential users often find that many communities simply prohibit or discourage the use of “panic button” callers to “call the police” or “911”, due to a propensity for inadvertent false alarms which may place emergency personnel and the public at unnecessary risk in responding to an accidentally initiated “false alarm” call. In some towns, the false dialing of 911 by an autodialer can result in a substantial penalty fine.
Central Station Hailer
Instead of auto-dialing “911” or a local care-provider, the remote receiver may instead auto-dial a central monitoring station. Devices which allow this sort of filtered intervention are known, typified by a “Life Alert™” system (Life Alert Systems, 16027 Ventura Blvd., Encino, Calif. 91436). When a user presses the panic button, the remote receiver auto-dials the Life Alert™ central monitoring office and sets the emergency response system into operation.
In plain language, this means that the central monitoring office makes a formularized determination that an emergency may be underway and that a predesignated emergency service (ambulance, etc.) or care-provider should be dispatched to check further. The principal limitation remains. The potential victim must still remember and be physically able to “press the panic button” to set the emergency response system into action.
Wearing a Panic Button is Not Dependable
A further drawback to a “panic button” actuated situation alarm is that the panic-button “sender” device must be worn at all times to be readily available to a user when it may be most needed. A panic button “left in another room”, on a bedside stand or in the dresser drawer across the room is often as bad as not having one! Panic buttons may also be lost. Sometimes, the signal sent by the panic button is not strong enough to be satisfactorily received by a remote. For example, a user who decides to work “out back in the garden” may inadvertently be out of range of the remote receiver and yet it is precisely this sort of exceptional situation (e.g., stressful working in the heat while in the garden, etc.) that may lead to the need for the panic button due to heart attack, stroke or even a fall-down injury.
It is well known that the range of most “panic button” actuated senders is similar to “cordless telephones” (e.g., not cellphones), with a dependable limit of less than about 150 feet, depending upon where the receiver is sited in the user's premises.
Panic Button Must be Pressed
A most significant limitation of the panic button approach is that the panic button must, in fact, “be intentionally and manually operated”. In other words, the panic button has to be deliberately “pressed” by the distressed user.
In many emergency situations, the victim may become confounded, unconscious or otherwise unable to fulfill this seemingly simple essential manual step of “pressing” the panic button. For example, a person experiencing a stroke, heart attack, seriously palpitating heart or seizure may simply not “immediately remember” to press the panic button to hail for help. All too often, the victim may further choose to initially wait to see if the affliction will “go away”. Sometimes the victim simply has too much pride to “bother others” with his or her first signs of an attack.
As a result of the waiting, the condition may quickly worsen to a level where the victim can not, forgets or otherwise fails to press the panic button. Strokes and various kinds of diabetic, epileptic and substance abuse (or alcoholic) seizures are known to result in this potentially fatal lack of capacity for even rudimentary action, e.g., merely “pressing the panic button”. As a result, no hailing alarm is initiated signifying a responder of a user's difficulty. Consequentially, the user or victim may die or suffer irreparable brain damage before “help” otherwise avails itself, in absence of the user having initiated the emergency signal.